At Woods Hole Massachusetts, on June 6, 2006, we designated the June 2006 Z Sessions on Vision and Strategy gathering as the founding and first policy meeting of the International Project for a Participatory Society. At this June meeting we decided our mission statement, name, project definition, basic principles/values, a date for the next policy meeting--in Atlanta at the U.S. Social Forum from June 27-July1 (possible online hookup for those who can’t be there)--and to present a Participatory Society program (building on the Life After Capitalism experience) at the Atlanta events.
We decided to focus on the following in the next six months:
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-> Creating a web site for public communications, etc.
Responsibility: Evan Henshaw Plath, Michael Albert, Justin Podur
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-> Creating content for the IPPS website
Responsibility: All members organized into editorial threesomes or other combinations, as well as operating singly. Those who presented vision/strategy papers at ZSVS could improve on it; others who didn’t make presentations could do so; still others could cover new areas of concern such as law, education, environment, etc.
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Some threesomes created at the June meeting:
Law: Brecher, Sitrin, Ceric
South Asian: Kolhatkar, Podur, Mahajan
Education: Grubacic, LeJeune, Baillargeon
Kinship/ParSociety: Sargent, Ponniah, Peters
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-> Creating a blog system for members (public) dialog and debate
Responsibility: Justin Podur, Brian Dominick
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-> Researching experiments in visionary institutional building
Responsibility: Sonali Kolhatkar, Jamie LeJeune, Tamara Vukov, Tom Wetzel, Marie Trigona, Milan Rai, Marina Sitrin,
Irina Ceric, Andrej Grubaci, Chris Spannos, Normand Baillargeon
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-> Creating an internal newsletter
Responsibility: Marie Trigona, Andy Dunn, Lydia Sargent
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-> Develop tools to aid experiments in creating participatory society institutions
Responsibility: Andrej Grubacic, Chris Spannos, Sean Gonzalves, Evan Henshaw Plath, Jamie LeJeune, Chantal Santerre
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-> Develop program for the Atlanta Social Forum
Responsibility: Kendra Fehrer, Jamie LeJeune, Thomas Ponniah, Lydia Sargent, Michael Albert
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-> Creating a speakers bureau for members
Responsibility: Cynthia Peters, Steve Shalom, Chris Spannos, Sean Gonzalves
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-> Assisting members with publishing their work
Responsibility: Ezequiel Adamovsky, Sonali Kolhatkar, Jeremy Brecher
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-> Establish means for dealing with internal disputes, conflicts, errors, etc.
Responsibility: Irina Ceric, Justin Podur, Milan Rai, Mark Evans, Kendra Fehrer
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